SARATOGA SPRINGS — Meg Morley was struck by parent testimonials at a town hall meeting on underage drinking Friday morning.

“You never really think about how it affects your parents,” the 17-year-old Burnt Hills girl said.

But hearing the message from other teens who have been there might be the best deterrent to underage drinking as prom season and graduations approach.

Non-drinkers taking a stand will encourage others not to give in to peer pressure, said Crystal Dussault, 18, of Charlton.

“If they go against it, they’re the uncool people,” Dussault said.

The two were among about 60 youths, professionals who work with teens and a smattering of parents at the breakfast meeting. The girls attended to obtain ideas for anti-drinking presentations for their health class.

Their peers from the Saratoga Springs and Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake high schools were on the panel, which also included Saratoga County District Attorney James Murphy III, Jean Devlin, a student assistance counselor at local schools, and recovering alcoholic Will Linner of Fort Edward.

It’s easy for teens to obtain alcohol, teen panelists said.

Youths either steal it from their parents, buy it with fake IDs, turn to older siblings or wait by a store entrance and solicit patrons to buy them alcohol, said Casey Slone from Saratoga Springs High School.

Students who work at restaurants with bars have another avenue of obtaining booze, said Jordan Stern, also a Saratoga Springs High School student. When he worked at a restaurant, bottles with alcohol left in them went back to the basement at the end of the night.

“I’ve seen kids take those out the door to go home,” Stern said. “I’ve tried to stop them and that kind of stuff, but it’s hard.”

The students said teens can hide the fact that they’re stealing from parents by taking a little bit out of each liquor bottle or by taking vodka and topping the bottle off with water.

“They’re not going for taste. They’re just going to get drunk,” Stern said.

Some teens combine alcohol with marijuana or other drugs and then drive, Stern said.

The teens said that while most parents don’t supply large parties with alcohol, some do host small gatherings of students who are drinking and then turn a blind eye to what’s happening in their homes.

And some of those parties wind up bigger than the parents imagined, Murphy said, recounting the story of a Wilton father who hosted a graduation party for his son and saw the number of guests balloon from 15 to 50 teens after a few text messages and cellphone calls.

“The dad ultimately realized this was way out of control,” Murphy said.

Some boys were charged with rape after they took drunk girls out to the backyard. Other youths grabbed their car keys even though the father had confiscated them.

Even seemingly innocuous actions can lead to stiff consequences. Using false identification is a felony that carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison, although teens who are caught likely will serve much less than that, Murphy noted.

One mother asked the panel how parents who don’t want their children to drink can be consistent without making the teens miserable.

The panelists agreed that firmness is best, even if the youngsters don’t like it.

“That’s pretty common,” Will Linner quipped. “It’s called pouting.”

Parents need to talk to their children about the dangers before they come up and not be permissive about underage drinking, the panelists said.

“I think we have to get out of our heads, parents, that kids are just going to tell us that they’ve been drinking,” Murphy said.

Donna Hays, a registered nurse who started drinking as a teenager, started an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Saratoga Springs just for young people. Called Young Adults in Recovery, it meets from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays at the Prevention Council at 36 Phila St. on the second floor.

She hopes that parents of youths who are in trouble with alcohol will “ground” their children by making them attend several meetings of the group.

“You couldn’t scare me into not drinking,” Hays said of the tactics adults try to use to warn teens away from alcohol. “The main thing is, they’re able to identify with other young kids their age.”

Linner, 25, who now lives in Fort Edward but grew up in Toledo, Ohio, started drinking at age 15. At his Catholic boys’ school, hard drinkers got more peer recognition than accomplished athletes, he told the group.

He had a great time and didn’t suffer any ill consequences in high school.

But “just because somebody’s getting away with it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem,” Linner said.

He later failed out of college and called for help. But when people suggested going into recovery and changing his whole life, he balked.

“I was not interested in that. I just wanted to learn how to drink better.”

He now has been in recovery for three years.